What I'm Watching -- Heroes

Now that's more like it. After what I thought was a slow and uneven start to Heroes sophomore season, the hit television show shook off the rust and tried to show it won't fall victim to the "sophomore slump" that has doomed other television shows. Tonight's episode tied together some hanging storylines, introduced some new, critical plot points, and gave us an interesting, exciting, and cliffhanging ending.

As I've said before, I was not a big fan of the Maya and Alejandro storyline, but tonight, with them meeting up with Sylar, and unwittingly joining forces as they try to cross the border into the United States to meet with Dr. Suresh (well, Mohinder's father is dead, thanks to Sylar, so can't see that meeting working out well for the twins) but I'm now actually interested in seeing where the story goes from here. And since Sylar seemingly can't absorb people's powers, at least for now, he probably won't kill Maya and Alejandro right away.

And the storyline with Parkman and Molly was great too. We're finally learning more about the first generation of Heroes, and it really is no surprise that Parkman's father was part of the original group (it makes perfect sense now that I think about it, but I'll be honest, I never considered it before). I did not see coming that he was Molly's "boogeyman," and whether Matt can save Molly, and find his villainous dad should make for some great episodes to come.

I can deal without the Claire/West storyline, but if it's a necessary evil to get to eventual conflict with HRG, and fulfill Isaac's final paintings, I can deal with that. And the introduction of Dana Davis' character (Monica, Micah's older cousin) I thought was well done. Monica was great on last season's underrated drama The Nine, and she had a nice debut tonight.

The cast, though, is getting exceedingly large (and will grow with the introduction of Kristen Bell's upcoming character) and as such, the shows can't fit in each characters storyline each episode. Nikki has been relatively absent all season, and both Peter and Hiro/Ando/Kensei were absent from this episode. It's very Lost-like in a way, where the cast is so large, only some storylines are paid off each week, because 42-minutes just isn't enough time to tell everyone's story. I hope the writers and producers don't forget where some of the numerous storylines they have up in the air are going. I have confidence that they won't, and after tonight, in what was a giant step forward after three mediocre weeks to begin the second season, hopefully things will only get better from here.